Potholes turn area roads into moonscapes

Pothole repair season begins. Road crew are out in force to repair area roads.

Pothole repair season begins. Road crew are out in force to repair area roads.

Of The Morning Call

Sympathy for the pothole filler

Rick Dauscher and Jason Schimenek sometimes get more dirty looks than an Allentown pothole.

And they're two of the guys who fill them.

You might be familiar with their work. That blob of fresh blacktop in the 700 block of Greenleaf Street is a Dauscher and Schimenek masterpiece. On Wednesday morning, it had been a crater caused by a temperature shift or an overzealous snow plow.

Just after noon, Schimenek and Dauscher rolled up in their Allentown Public Works "Hot Box" truck. Dauscher dumped a draught of steaming asphalt. Smoke swallowed Schimenek, as he raked, tamped and smoothed. They patched the broken roadway to the tune of car horns, endured a few glares and rolled away in minutes, back to a day of hunting rough patches on Allentown's winter-scarred streets.

"This time of year, you get some thumbs up" from drivers, said Schimenek, who has worked Allentown's pothole detail for the past 12 years.

But more often than not, said Dauscher, a 20-year veteran of the Public Works Department, drivers turn on the springtime frost. Sometimes, as crews perform their surgery on a busy street, lines of traffic gather and tempers flare.

Road crew are out in force to repair area roads. (CHRIS SHIPLEY / SPECIAL TO THE MORNING CALL )

As spring 2015 revs up, Allentown is one of a few Lehigh Valley municipalities that are permanently fixing their torn-up roads. Already, crews have filled 2,000 potholes, streets Superintendent Mark Shahda said. That's nearly double what the city has usually filled by mid-March, he said.

It's clear that like last year, the harsh winter has turned Lehigh Valley streets to moonscapes.

Public works departments in Bethlehem and Easton also are patching some of their biggest profanity-inducing potholes, but they're using a substance called cold patch. It has the benefit of not needing to be heated but the drawback of lasting only a day or so.

"Some of the ground is still frozen," Bethlehem Public Works Director Mike Alkhal said last week. "That doesn't help with repairs."

At the moment, Alkhal said, as the spring thaw creeps in, the frozen ground is still shifting. Once it's settled, Bethlehem will start making permanent repairs.

One reason Allentown is filling potholes now is that the city's supplier, H&K Asphalt in Coopersburg, is open this time of year. Many other local asphalt companies close for the winter and don't open until this week.

Allentown's "Hot Box" truck is equipped with a heating element that keeps the hot asphalt warm. They've had the truck for about 15 years, said Robbie Correll, maintenance supervisor. It holds about 21/2 to 3 tons of asphalt, and the two-man team fills it twice a day.

Allentown's pothole hotline (610-437-8775) has been fielding about 20 to 30 calls a day, Shahda said, which is about the same as last year.

Bethlehem's pothole hotline (610-865-7053), has been ringing about 14 to 20 times per day, Alkhal said.

"The volume of calls has been above average," he said.

Easton doesn't have a hotline number. It asks that residents who spot a road in need of repair contact the Public Works Department at 610-250-6680.

Director Dave Hopkins said the city will be contending with hundreds of potholes on its streets.

"We were doing fairly well," Hopkins said, "then we had that cold snap in February."

Like last year, the freeze caused Easton side streets to heave up in spots. The city hadn't caught up with all of its road work from the 2013-14 winter. So the city more than doubled its allocation for road repairs — about $375,000 to $400,000, including state grants.

Allentown has been sending out two-man crews. Someone jots down reports from the automated pothole hotline onto slips of paper. Dauscher keeps the slips on a clipboard in the cab of his truck and drives from pothole to pothole.

On the way, he and Schimenek scout for other problem spots. They fix them, log the work onto a slip of paper and add it to the stack on the clipboard.